“Rise, Senora Fremont.” A cold hand took hers and raised her, and she looked up into his eyes. “We are honored by guests who have come so far.”
A shiver of shock ran through her. Goodness gracious, he was only a boy! But the eyes—dark, hollow, miserable—these were the eyes of someone who had been in a prison cell for years, or been afflicted with pain for so long he had forgotten what it meant to be free of it.
He had not released her hand.
Some compulsion, some flood of sympathy, overwhelmed her and she clasped his cold fingers in her warm ones. “Oh, sir,” she murmured, “what can we do to help you?”
He blinked in shock, and removed his hand from hers abruptly. “I am in no need of help,” he said. “You forget yourself, Senora.”
And she had. She had probably just thrown away her one chance to be asked to dance, too. “I am so sorry, I—”
The majordomo announced the family of a neighboring rancho amid much fanfare, and Gloria and the captain were forced to move along the line to the grandee and his wife, their three daughters surrounding them like a flock of pretty birds. She had the presence of mind to curtsey and keep her mouth shut, and to allow her husband to murmur thanks and pleasantries.
She did not, however, miss the sharp look that the eldest daughter gave her gown, and when they rose out of their mutual curtsey, Gloria realized she must be looking at its former owner, who did not seem to know whether to be amused or affronted.
Perhaps she had better leave now, before the evening became any worse.
“What was that about?” the captain whispered to her as they moved off toward the loaded tables, where there actually appeared to be a fountain dispensing wine. “What possessed you to be so familiar with the Viceroy?”
“I—I don’t know,” she moaned. “I don’t know what came over me. He looks dreadful. I couldn’t help myself.”
“Word has it that he is possessed of the Holy Spirit,” Ella said as she and Riley joined them at a table spread with more food than Gloria had seen in months. “They say he is like a lamp worn thin with the effort to contain the power of God.”
“He’s worn thin with something, that’s certain.” Captain Stan loaded a plate for her and one for himself, and after a moment, Riley attempted to do the same for Ella.
“I can feed myself, thank you,” she said rather crisply, and took the plate away from him. “The poor man. His hands are very cold. The power of God must not be the sort that keeps you warm.”
“Looks like poison to me.” Riley didn’t talk very much when he was sober, but when he did, Gloria had noticed her husband listened.
“Keep your voice down,” the captain told him tersely, “or you may find yourself in gaol facing charges of treason.”
“Just saying.”
Gloria opened her mouth to protest—for surely there was a much less sinister explanation—when a voice spoke behind her.
“Gloria? Heavens above, can it be you?”
She turned. Her mouth fell open. And if it hadn’t been for Ella’s quick hand, her plate of food would have crashed to the floor.
“Evan? Evan!” She leaped across the flagstones and threw herself into his arms. “I thought you were dead!” And with that, she forgot dignity altogether and burst into tears. Oh, he was so blessedly, impossibly solid and alive and … thin. So dreadfully thin! What was wrong with the men in this country?
But it was Evan! He was alive!
She could not let him go, the wool of his black jacket scratchy under her wet cheek, and when she felt a weight upon her shoulder, she realized that his head was bowed and he was sobbing in joy, too, his arms locked about her as though she were a treasure he thought he had lost forever.
And then she heard a sound like a cry, like an animal that has been suddenly wounded—or had a thorn removed that has been a source of torture for a long time. It had not been she. It had not been Evan.
Gasping, she looked up. What…?
Ella, her face so white it looked almost green in the flickering light of the torches and festive lamps set all around the huge courtyard, staggered. Riley managed to remove the plates in both her hands, and set them on the table behind him. A strange man who had been standing beside Evan darted in to hold her up, both hands spanning her waist, as she stared into his eyes.
“Dios mio.” Ella’s voice trembled. “It cannot be. Is this a dream? Have we all died, and are reunited in heaven?”
“Perhaps we might find somewhere a little more private in which to express our joy,” Captain Stan suggested. “This seems to be a most welcome reunion, but I’m afraid it is attracting attention.”
Gloria clung to Evan, feeling quite certain that he would disappear from the fiesta as suddenly as he had disappeared from the Battle of Resolution, if she did not keep a hand upon him. Captain Stan shepherded them over to the colonnade, where tables and chairs had been arranged in groups so that people who had not seen one another since the last fiesta could converse in relative privacy.
She sank into a chair, her skirts poufing around her, as she clung to Evan’s hand. “Captain,” she said breathlessly, “it is a miracle! I cannot believe it, even with the proof in my own hands.”
“Evidently,” her husband said.
“This is Evan Douglas, who traveled from England with us aboard Swan. He disappeared during the Battle of Resolution, and I thought he was dead!” She shook Evan’s hand between her own as though he had been naughty not to tell her the opposite was true. “You must tell us what happened. What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same.” His gaze devoured her, his hand gripping her own tightly. “You are the one who disappeared. It was only by the process of elimination that I concluded you had gone on Silver Wind—so I followed you in the behemoth.”
“The behemoth!” The captain and Riley exchanged a glance, but Gloria was too intent on Evan’s story to heed it.
“Yes, I taught myself how to operate it, and followed the railroad for days until I saw Silver Wind sitting at a siding, at which point I learned that the crew were out in the rocks, looking for you.”
She could hardly believe it. “You were so close—but the flash flood—it swept me into the Rio de Sangre Colorado de Christo. It killed so many men—but how—”
“That is how the Ambassador tricked me into walking the behemoth right over the border into the Royal Kingdom of Spain, and delivering it handily to His Highness.” Evan’s mouth trembled with disgust—at himself? At the Ambassador? Gloria could not tell. “At every crossing, it seemed, you had been seen just a little further downstream. I searched the banks for days, and when I met the Ambassador and his men again, they said you were in a hospital in Las Vegas—the water meadows where the river comes into the valley.”
“But I wasn’t. I’ve never been there in my life.”
“So I was told when they arrested me and tossed me into gaol with Joe, here.” He indicated the tall, slender man whose appearance had nearly made Ella faint.
“Joe?” Ella croaked. Her gaze searched that of the man, as though she had been expecting … something else.
“The same,” Joe said, and then added something rapidly in the Californio tongue that Gloria could not understand.
Ella flushed scarlet and pressed her hands to her cheeks. When she caught Gloria’s eyebrows raised in question, she said, “Hon—Joe—is Clara’s, um, son. He was shanghaied a year ago and we all thought he was dead also.” Her gaze returned to him, and she shook her head slowly, as though acknowledging a miracle. “But he is not. Oh, thank the holy angels, he is not. Clara will be transported with joy.”
“I’m quite resurrected, in fact,” Joe said with a grin.
“This is wonderful.” Gloria felt as though she had downed a glass of champagne, so fizzy inside did she feel, so dizzy with happiness. “I do believe I have never been so happy in my life as I am at this moment … other than the night Claire rescued me from Hay House, that is.”
“Oh!” Evan caught her hand again as if he could not bear its absence. “That’s something else. You’ll never guess who our fellow cellmate was.”
“I could not. What other unfortunates among our acquaintance have found his way to this godforsaken place?”
He grinned. “None other than Captain Barnaby Hayes.”
“No!” Gloria felt quite breathless at this fresh revelation. The scoundrel who had kidnapped her from Venice in an undersea dirigible in order to bait a trap for her father’s capture? The wretch who had practically proposed marriage and who had imposed on her affections most abominably? She released Evan’s hand. “Impossible.”
“Quite possible—if you are a spy with the Walsingham Office.”
“If he’s in gaol with you, he must not be a very good one,” the captain observed.
Really, he might be a little more pleasant on such a joyful night. Could her husband not share a little of her happiness at being reunited with one of her friends? Frankly, it was a miracle and they all ought to be thanking God for it!
“Bad luck happens to everyone,” Joe observed. “He was shanghaied, same as me.”
Gloria observed that Joe’s gaze had not left Ella’s face—nor had hers left his. They sat across the white damask tablecloth from one another, their food cooling on their plates, in another world altogether.
Deep inside, under the happiness of seeing her friend safe and mostly unharmed, ran a tiny trickle of relief. It was clear now that she would no longer have to feel guilt at having stolen Captain Stan away from the woman who loved him. Clearly, Ella’s feelings for Clara’s son were of the deeper, more reliable kind, and of a longstanding nature. What must she be feeling, seeing him in this crowd and being unable to give voice to her emotions?
“Yes, he was captured,” Evan said, returning to his dinner with a vengeance. “But he is very much the spy—we came literally within inches of carrying out a plan—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “—to destroy the dam.”
Only this would have brought Ella back to the corporeal plane. “What stopped you?” she breathed after a glance at the chattering family at the next table. “The entire nation of witches—to say nothing of the Navapai—both are in mortal danger with every inch the river rises.”
Evan gestured with his fork toward the Viceroy at the high table, flanked on either side by the grandee and his family, then the royal equerries and councilors. “I was summoned.”
“By whom? For what?” Gloria could not imagine what connection Evan Douglas might have with a prince.
“By the Viceroy. To interpret his dreams.”
Captain Stan put down his knife, with which he had been spearing olives. “I beg your pardon? You are the one we heard of?”
Evan finally stopped shoveling in his food. Now he too laid down fork and knife neatly in the middle of a clean plate. “I do not know what you have heard, but in England, I have something of a reputation for inventing the mnemosomniograph—a device for recording and understanding dreams. The garrison commander discovered my experience with dreams, and one night when he had a nightmare, he sent for me to interpret one of his. I did so—whether rightly or wrongly, I cannot say. But the word must have traveled, for the next thing we knew, I was on a train heading north under full escort, with Joe here to act as my translator. I am apparently to perform the same service for His Highness.”
“When?” Gloria asked him, her brevity the result of surprise at this turn of events.
“I do not know. We only just arrived. I expect I will receive a summons soon, probably in the middle of the night.”
“But why?” Captain Stan asked. “The people say that these dreams are sent by God, and that His Serene Highness is a prophet.”
“His Serene Highness is ill.” Evan leaned in toward them. “I say this as a medical doctor.”
“Told you,” Riley said. “Poison.”
“Anything is possible, but whatever it is, I doubt that God is behind it,” Evan said. “I am anxious to examine him, and if interpreting dreams is to be the pretext, then I will oblige to the best of my ability.”
Gloria put her left hand on his. “You must be careful. This country is a powder keg, and one spark could set it off. That is why I am here—my goal has not changed one whit. I must see the Viceroy in private and convince him not to pursue this war.”
If she had expected a declaration of support, or even reassurance, she did not get it. For Evan was staring at her hand as though a scorpion decorated it rather than a gold ring.
“Gloria, what is this?” He lifted her hand, then met her gaze.
Oh, dear. Oh, dear. If she had thought Ella’s heart had been broken, this was much worse. Evan’s eyes—
She had not realized—
Oh, dear.
“That is my wife’s wedding ring,” the captain said evenly when Gloria did not reply.
“Wife?”
She must say something. She must do something. Under no circumstances must he be made to feel small, or rejected, or any of the other unpleasant things ascribed to unhappy suitors. He deserved better, after pursuing her halfway across the territory and getting himself captured and imprisoned for her sake.
“It was the only way for me to accomplish my mission,” she explained awkwardly. “A woman cannot travel in this country alone, so the captain made the only offer possible under the circumstances. It was most generous and courageous of him.”
She did not dare meet her husband’s eyes at this speech, though it was the literal truth.
“You mean—it is a union of necessity? You are married to a man you do not love?” Evan’s gaze searched hers, looking for … looking for … the impossible.
“That, sir, is taking the privilege of friendship too far.” Captain Stan pushed his plate away. “The orchestra has just indicated that sets may form. Gloria, will you do me the honor?”
“But—” Evan began.
The captain’s arm was as hard as iron under her hand, and she had no choice but to accompany him out into the center of the plaza, and to take her place opposite him in the lines of dancers.
Only I could manage to break two men’s hearts in the space of three minutes, she thought in despair.
And then, as the music began, she realized that Stanford had put them at the very bottom of the Viceroy’s set, where, when the pattern of the dance brought her to him, the prince could not avoid speaking to her.
“Are you in love with him?” Captain Stan asked as they swung in a circle between the lines of dancers in a waltz hold, then separated.
Her thoughts scattered like birds. “This is hardly the time or place.”
“You are the one who suggested divorce on the very day we were married, my dear.”
She fumed as they separated, each circling the person next to them in the line, then coming together again, one place down.
“You cannot ask me that, when your ring and a very elaborate wedding certificate make the question irrelevant.”
She circled a grandee, smiled prettily, and was handed back down the line to the captain, who turned her in an inescapably polite hold between the two lines once more.
“The legalities do not preclude an emotional tie,” he pointed out. “Answer me.”
She had eight beats of music to smile and wrestle with her temper. Honestly, did he think she was going to break her marriage vows with poor Evan? And he had become so angry when she had suggested he might do the same, at the very beginning of their journey!
“No, I am not in love with him, though several weeks ago I thought I might be.” There. Let him find a way to apologize for casting such aspersions on her character.
It took two patterns danced in silence, and two places moved up the line, before he finally said, “I suspect the same may not be true on his side.”
“I cannot help that, though I am sorry.”
“For me, or for him?”
“For him, you goose. I have no reason to be sorry for you.”
“Yes, I am quite sure you will wear black for precisely the required number of months if I should be killed in the course of this adventure.”
The pattern of the dance separated them as her mouth fell open in dismay. How could he say such a dreadful, heartless thing! Did their growing friendship, the strengthening of her regard for him—blast it, the effect he had on her heartbeat—did that all mean nothing? Why, she had a mind to—
She looked up into her new partner’s face and closed her mouth with a gulp. “Your Serene Highness.”
“Senora Fremont. Are you quite well? You look flushed.”
“I shall not take offense at the inquiry,” she said, summoning the smile she gave her closest friends, “when I know it springs from honest concern. I am quite well, thank you. My husband was teasing me.”
He bit his lip. “I will apologize for my earlier conduct at greater length when you accept me as a partner for the waltz. If your husband does not object.”
“He will be as honored as I, Your Serene Highness.”
“Until the waltz, then.”
He moved down the line and Gloria found herself once more in the captain’s arms. “Well?”
“I am not speaking to you, sir.”
“That is immaterial. Are you speaking to the Viceroy, is the question.”
“Yes. He has requested the waltz.”
“Then your mission could be accomplished by the end of the evening. This could be the shortest union of necessity in the history of such things.”
The dance parted them, and when next she could speak, she said, “I hardly think so. The most I could accomplish is to request an audience.”
“I have much greater faith in your abilities than that, Mrs. Fremont.”
“What a pity you do not have as great a faith in other things,” she retorted.
He would have replied, but the orchestra leader, observing that the Viceroy had reached the end of the set, brought the music to a close. Gloria took the opportunity to turn and cross the room without waiting for her escort, but he anticipated her. When she found her way to the punch bowl, he had already ladled a cup for her, a decorative orange slice as thin as paper floating on top.
Fields of Iron: A steampunk adventure novel Page 18